Rudy Hartono, Lin Dan, Poul-Erik Hoyer, or Lee Chong Wei, who wins the badminton GOAT race?

Forget cold statistics, for the X-factor needed for any player to qualify for the title of the Greatest Of All Time, there appears to be no need to look beyond Lin Dan. There are several claimants to that lofty pedestal, prime amongst them being the recently retired duo of Malaysia’s Lee Chong Wei and China’s Lin Dan, who have comprehensively dominated international badminton in the first two decades of the current millennium. Indonesia’s Rudy Hartono, who won the All-England title eight times from ten entries into the final in an eleven-year span between 1968 and 1978, when the All-England was considered the unofficial World Championship, is still thought of by many to be the best player of all time. Hartono’s immediate predecessor, the great Dane, Erland Kops, bagged the All-England crown at Wembley seven times from eight finals between 1957 and 1967, in the face of some tremendous opposition, and could be forgiven for his somewhat disparaging remark that Hartono won the title more times than him because any Indonesian who came up against him in the earlier rounds would ’throw’ the match on the instructions of the country’s badminton federation. Thus, to weigh the rival claims of Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan, one needs to first set aside the statistical red herring of quantity, and look at the quality of the players’ win-loss record.